New Site

Well everyone who may still be reading this way outdated blog, I want to let you all know that I have officially opened up JustinVanRheenen.com. Please update your bookmarks and look toward that one for new information.

Mike Huckabee for President

Here is why I am voting for Mike Huckabee for president.

Pastor Provocateur | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Pastor Provocateur | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Driscoll can't stand in front of a crowd for long without stirring things up. That's what you get from a pastor who learned how to preach by watching comedian Chris Rock. Before long, he has the audience going. "If you're going to be a fundamentalist or moralist … pick things like bathing with your wife to be legalistic about," Driscoll says in his distinct, gravelly voice. "Don't pick something stupid like, 'Don't listen to rock music.' I don't know who's choosing all the legalisms, but they picked the worst ones. Eat meat, bathe together, and nap—those would be my legalisms. Those are things I can do."

Driscoll "comes off as a smart-aleck former frat boy," according to The Seattle Times. Guilty as charged. If he hasn't offended you, you've never read his books or listened to his sermons. On any given Sunday at Mars Hill, it's possible that a visiting fire marshal will get saved. But it's just as likely that a guest will flip him off before walking out.

The spectrum of response speaks to his sharp tongue—his greatest strength and his glaring weakness. But Driscoll also disturbs many fellow evangelicals because he straddles the borders that divide us. His unflinching Reformed theology grates on the church-growth crowd. His plan to grow a large church strikes postmoderns as arrogant. His roots in the emerging church worry Calvinists. No one group can claim him. Maybe that's why they all turn their guns on him.

Check out this article on Mark Driscoll. And if it's any consolation...I haven't turned my guns on him.

Response to Grudem on Baptism and Church Membership :: Desiring God

Response to Grudem on Baptism and Church Membership :: Desiring God

I would gladly admit Ligon Duncan or Sinclair Ferguson or R. C. Sproul or Philip Ryken to membership at Bethlehem (if I were allowed by our constitution), and in doing so I would not be giving up my view on the proper nature of baptism.

I would say to them: “Brothers, I think you are not baptized. But you believe on biblical grounds as you see them, with as much humility and openness to truth as God has given you, that you are baptized. Your understanding of baptism does not imply that Christ’s command may be neglected or that infant sprinkling is regenerating. You give good evidence of being born again and that you embrace Christ as your Savior and Lord and Treasure, and you manifest an authentic intention, on the basis of that faith, to follow Jesus as Lord and obey his teachings. Therefore, since there is good evidence that you are members of the Body of Christ, you may be members of this local expression of that body. But understand this: I will spend the rest of my ministry trying to persuade you that you and your children should follow through on the full obedience to Jesus and be baptized. In admitting you, I do not give up on my view of baptism. That is the whole point. We are finding a way to work on this disagreement from inside the body of Christ in its local expression.”

My question for Piper is to what extent would he allow these men then to serve in the church. Would it be a teacher, youth leader, etc.? What would happen if they started teaching others their views? Now we would have others potentially causing a division within the church teaching something contrary to what Piper would be teaching? This is where I believe Piper to be wrong on this issue. I do so with reverence knowing he is way more affluent in the Bible than I am and that I am still learning.

Now I am intrigued however, that he would take a position that says that he would admit somebody into membership of the local church based not on their public display of obedience to Christ through baptism after salvation but on the fact that they have placed their trust in Christ solely. Now I believe the issue comes whether someone has been baptized as a baby or after conversion, but does the issue span into somebody that hasn't ever been baptized? Can the same principle apply do this person? Or would Piper say that the person needs to be baptized before becoming a member of the local church? Do we have the right to not exclude somebody from membership, but put their membership on hold until they are properly baptized? Because I don't think it matters a hill of beans if somebody has a "biblical" conviction on their paedobaptism if it isn't biblical.

What are your thoughts?

Read Grudem's response to John Piper

Mark Driscoll

I have been listening to Mark Driscoll's series on Nehemiah. My interest was sparked with when first heard his message on "Leadership Lessons on Nehemiah" (scroll down the page to download the message. He does a "10,000 ft." overview of the whole book of Nehemiah and the leadership lessons that he sees in the book. But his main point that he makes is something that I have been pondering about for the last few weeks. Mark Driscoll takes a reformed view to his theology (whether it is because he doesn't like the principle of dispensationalism or what, I don't know) and he believes that the church is suppose to create a "city within the city." Meaning, my church is to be a city with the city of Des Moines. A city that doesn't things differently than the other city. But we are be a place of security first to the believer, and then to the greater city, ultimately leading them to Jesus. In all things, we are to lead everyone to Jesus.

Today I listened to his first 3 messages of his Nehemiah Series (click to download the podcast from iTunes). and I am absolutely loving every second of it. Why? Because it practical! He takes Nehemiah right to who we are, how we're driven, how we're wired, and shows the same struggles, the same thoughts, the same fears that we all have. But here is the challenge. Nehemiah created a city within the cities around Jerusalem. Everyone had a part in the city. And the city was going to be different from the cities around them.

How does this apply? My dispensational theology has been challenged. I have been taught to "separate" from the "city" not became apart of the city. Which I have known this is not right. Jesus gone into the thick of the city around him and still was God. I am going to keep listening. Let me know what you think. Download and listen. If not the series, at least the leadership lessons.

Question?

So what is a "fundamental baptist"? What does that really mean?

SEPARATION, SEPARATION, SEPARATION! Part 1

The Des Moines Register ran an article on Jerry Falwell on May 16, 2007. In that article (pg. 4A), Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary states of Falwell, "[Falwell] deserves credit almost single-handedly bringing fundamentalism out of separation into political activity."

Has fundamentalism come out of separation? Not in my tiny world of fundamentalism. But in my tiny world of fundamentalism, I see separation and political activity as two important issues within this movement. I say movement because fundamentalism is a movement. Even Ernest Pickering in his message at the 1969 GARBC Annual Conference in Fort Wayne, IN says this.

The remainder of this post is going to be attributed to this message. It has also been adapted and published in the February edition of the Baptist Bulletin. Click here to read this article.

I want to address an issue that I have seen and have heard comments preached from the pulpit at my bible college. A lot of times I hear terms that refer the fundamentalist churches to those who are comparable to Israel. As if the fundamentalist churches are just as important on a large scale as Israel. We are to "reach our own Jerusalem," we compare our battles to that of Israel and it frustrates me to think that we can align ourselves with Israel as if we are apart of the same family. I don't see this laid out in scripture. In fact there is a separation of us from Israel. We are not apart of the same family. We are not apart of the same promises. We are only apart of the same future; with Jesus forever.

So the message that Ernest Pickering preaches frustrates me. According to the printed version of this message, Pickering begins with comparing separatist fundamentalist generational struggle to that of Joshua's concerns with "God's chosen nation." In fact the Old Testament book of Joshua is used through out this entire message to show that separation is in fact what God wants from the church (a New Testament term). Now I understand that we can gain principles from the Old Testament, however I struggle with gaining a methodological outlook on a New Testament principle from an Old Testament context.

He states...

The key note of Joshua's address is found in the words, "Come not among these nations" (23:4, KJV). Israel was to have no spiritual fellowship with those who were walking in darkness and worshiping false deities. The command was specific and clear. God wanted His people to be separated.

However, God also wanted Israel to be physically and socially separated from the nations that lived around them. Now if the same principle is to be applied to the church, as I am sure Pickering is implying, then we in the church should be religiously, physically, and socially separated from the world around us. I struggle with this because I just don't see this in New Testament Scriptures. "Being in the world" is halted if we can't be "in" the world.
God gave Israel land. There wasn't another world for them to even live in according to God. The land that they had possessed was theirs. Anybody that was not of them was to be driven out. That was to be their world that they could control. But Pickering tries to get "the church" to be "the true people of God" through this message. He uses this phrase twice saying that the "true people of God" are to "maintain the principle of complete separation from [interfaith worship] confusion" and that Joshua warned that idol worship will weaken the "true people of God." It is white noise to my ears to consider myself the "true people of God" because I am in the family of God. I am an heir and I am not just a "person." A "people" then is a nation or group of people that have first place. Israel are these people and they have first place in the eyes of God. Before I was saved, there was Israel and after I die, there will be Israel.

Now, Pickering goes on saying,

It is interesting to see that Joshua placed some emphasis upon the importance of the home in maintaining a strong stand for Jehovah God. He warned that Israelites were not to "make marriages with them," that is, with the heathen peoples who lived around them. The strength of the nation was measured by the strength of its homes.

Now he says something that really irks me. He says, "If parents and children did not maintain a separation from the heathen, then the separated stand of the entire nation would be threatened. The same is true today." But what nation is Pickering talking about? Israel? Yes! The church? NO! Joshua wasn't talking about the church. He was talking about the survival of a people group amongst heathens that God has said to destroy. I don't then understand the principle in which Pickering is trying to imply here. And how is this principle true today, as Pickering states? He says:

The stand of our churches will be only as strong as the stand of its homes. We cannot expect to have churches that are strong in their separated position if the homes that compromise those churches are weak and worldly. To this end we must guard against any deterioration of our position on personal separation from the world. A church whose homes are in fellowship with the world cannot maintain itself as a separated testimony from the world.

But how can this be done? What is he really talking about? Does he understand the implications for what he is saying? If I am understanding him correctly, the heathen are those who are not saved, "the true people of God" are Christians, and Christians are not have fellowship with any unsaved individuals. We are to live in our "Christian" worlds and have no contact with that which would cause "confusion" (whatever that is). Am I right?